Strong up the Middle?

Jerry Manuel made an excellent point yesterday about the value of interior defense, and most people will tell you that defense "up the middle" is more crucial than the exterior positions. "Up the Middle" includes 4 positions: Catcher, SS, 2B and CF.

Amazingly, we have a void in almost all of those positions. Carlos Beltran is a great CF, but will miss quite some time to start the year. Is Gary Matthews Jr. a strong defensive CF? Not even close. How about Angel Pagan? Probably not.

Luis Castillo, who is an experienced 2B, is no longer a good one. His range is sorely lacking and he does nothing exceptionally well defensively. His wheels have always been his only plus and with those gone so is his game. His UZR/150 has been in decline for years now, and he posted a career worst -12.0 last year.

At catcher, we have Henry Blanco, who has soft hands and a strong arm, but he doesn't strike me as an incredibly mobile catcher. He's also going to be 38 this year and that wont help him defensively. Visions of Jake Taylor (from the movie Major League) icing his knees come to mind. I'm picturing that most excellent sequence where Jake Taylor and Lou Brown exchange words about Jake's physical condition, but with Blanco and Manuel taking their place:

Jerry Manuel: Hey, Henry. Hows the knees holding up?

Henry Blanco: Great! Never been better.

Jerry Manuel: Mobility's good? No problem getting off the throw to second?

Henry Blanco: No problemo.

Jerry Manuel: I need a catcher, Henry. Someone who can lead this team on the field. But I want the absolute truth, here, are you one-hundred percent?

Henry Blanco: Yeah, would I bullshit you about something like that?

Jerry Manuel: You better ... if you wanna make this team.

Omir Santos has some limitations defensively as well, ranging from a mediocre (at best) arm to poor pitch selection management (according to the Mets front office). Our other options are Chris Coste (a utility player that catches) and Josh Thole (a position player that just recently converted to catcher). I'm not stricken with confidence in out catching defense, although I do feel we have enough options to avoid defensive embarrassment at the position.

And then there is Jose Reyes. People love to praise Jose as a talented shortstop, but Reyes is no where near as good defensively as most fans think ... and when you factor in his amazing speed and very strong arm, he's actually a disappointment defensively because despite being quicker, faster and stronger than most shortstops, his actual performance is average.

His one plus year defensively as a shortstop was in 2007, when he had a 7.5 UZR. In pretty much all of the other seasons, he has been around average, and last year he was actually bad, a -1.9 UZR (which would have been on pace for a -9.4 UZR had he played an entire season that way). I'll assume that was a sample size issue, but no matter how you shake it, unless he reverts to his 2007 form, he's nothing special with the glove.

To give you an idea of what better fielding shortstops give you as far as UZR, look at the leaders. Jack Wilson had an UZR/150 of 20.4. Adam Everett was a 13.6. Cesar Izturis was a 14.1. Even Derek Jeter, who had been a negative UZR for almost all of his career, had a breakout season last year and posted a solid 8.4 ... which is better than any year Jose Reyes has had in the field. Jose generally comes in around the top of the bottom 3rd of regulars defensively.

So it's safe to say that between Jose's averageness, no real strong (and young) defensive catcher, a well below average 2B and weak defense in CF (at least untul Beltran returns), that this team is pretty weak "up the middle".

To make matters worse (and add fuel to the fire) consider that we have Daniel Murphy playing first base (out of position, converted, and young) and Jason Bay - an outfielder known for his bat not his glove/range - in left field. Franceour is a fair right fielder, and David Wright had a horrible year defensively last year (-13.2 UZR/150) despite a few solid years before that.

Conclusion: It's safe to say that this team as currently constructed, supposedly built around pitching and defense, is somewhere between bad and average defensively.

2010: John Maine's Defining Year

Nothing like being overly dramatic right? Well, let's call this upcoming season, the most important season of John Maine's entire career.

Maine is coming into the season at age 28, but he will turn 29 in May. Maine is one of those guys you envision being a "youngster", but in truth there are many guys his age who have already put in 5+ quality seasons as a regular starter.

When you think of John Maine, you immediately think of durability issues. Maine has had only one season thus far with 30 or more starts, and one other season with 25 starts. The rest of his career he's been on the mend and on the shelf.

The Breakdown:

Maine has been noticeably solid whenever healthy. He always has a winning record and he always has a decent WHIP (typically in the 1.25 range). His strikeout rates have fluctuated a bit, but it's hard to tell with Maine because of the sample size each year. Overall, he strikes out 7.5 batters per 9, but the more starts he has had in a season, the higher his rate (as high as 8.5 per 9 a few years ago when he started 32 games.

Trends:

Maine's has been allowing fewer homeruns per 9 every year for his entire career. 2.5, 1.8, 1.5, 1.1, 1.0 and 0.9 last year. He's been improving as a "pitcher". The same had been true for his walk rates as well, until the last couple of years where it jumped up a hair. I think this might largely be the result of lack of regular games, coming off of injury and shaking off the rust.

Projections:

Bill James predicts that Maine is going to have a solid year, with a 3.86 ERA and 27 starts, striking out about 7.4 per 9 IP.

CHONE projections are a bit harsher. They predict closer to 22 starts, and a mediocre 4.46 ERA. The biggest difference between James and CHONE is that CHONE projects Maine to be more easily hit, yielding about 20 more hits and striking out 20+ fewer batters.

My Prediction:

This is tough, simply because no one really knows what John Maine's arm feel like. Even if it feels fine when the season starts, it could fatigue in June at which point we are looking at a different pitcher.

I am going to pick and choose from each side of the projections above. I think that Maine understand the value in staying healthy. A healthy mediocre pitcher can make a boatload of money these days, where the talented but oft injured guys struggle to get short-term incentive-laden deals. See Ben Sheets and Joel Pineiro for a great example. Sheets is twice the pitcher that Pineiro is, but Sheets is groping for a one year deal at the same kind of money that Pineiro is hoping to get for 3.

The net result is that Maine is going to look to continue improving as a pitcher, at the expense of his strikeout rate (and velocity). He'll pitch more to contact (especially in Citi Field) and secretly find some contentment in merely taking the hill every 5 days for a change.

Line: 12-8, 4.50 ERA, 165 IP, 28 GS, 7.0 K/9, 4.2 BB/9, .275 BAA

A Decade of Terrible Drafting

The more I read about this year's crop of pitchers available in free agency or through trade, the more it frustrates me to think about how we haven't gotten anything along the lines of starting pitching from our farm system in over a decade (or more).

The Mets over the years have tended to draft pitching more heavily than many other teams from what I remember, and what do we have to show for it? Mike Pelfrey and his 5+ ERA and super low strikeout rates?

Don't get me wrong, it's not that Pelfrey is garbage, I am rooting for the guy, but as far as starters go that we have drafted, he is the best we have to show for the last 10-12 years of drafting pitchers? Since our apperance in the 2000 World Series, let's take a look at some of the names that have come out of our system and slotted into the rotation:

• Dicky Gonzalez (2001) - 20 games in his MLB career
• Grant Roberts (2001) - never even made a start
• Tyler Walker (2002) - 1 start in his entire career
• Jae Seo (2003) - Out of MLB by 2007, had a decent year or two.
• Aaron Heilman (2003) - Never really given much of a chance to start by Mets
• Jeremy Griffiths (2003) - Appeared in 10 games in his MLB career
• Jason Roach (2003) - Started 2 games and was out of baseball that year
• Tyler Yates (2004) - 7 awful starts for the Mets, then massive injury.
• Alay Soler (2006) - 8 sub-par starts for the Mets, then out of baseball entirely.
• Brian Bannister (2006) - First decent pitcher on the list, we traded him away immediately.
• Mike Pelfrey (2006) - After 3 seasons, still trying to be better than league average
• Phil Humber (2006) - Trying to make a team this year, has been awful
• Carlos Muniz (2007) - Where is he now?
• John Neise (2008) - Still some hope, but not a major prospect

I mean, the list goes on in the bullpen as well, where we have been equally as bad. With the exception of Heath Bell (who we also traded away immediately), we haven't even produced a reliable reliever outside of our LOOGY, Pedro Feliciano. The rest is a long list of guys like Orber Moreno, Pat Strange and Eddie Kunz.

I challenge you to find any franchise that has been as bad as the Mets over the last 10+ years in producing a pitcher from their draft.

If you remove David Wright and Jose Reyes from the equation, our position players suffer from the same fate. At this point, 3 productive (OPS+ or ERA+ over 110) players in a decade has to be more attributed to the blind squirrel finding a nut theory than anything else. I mean, Pedro Feliciano was drafted by the Dodgers, not the Mets, and he was picked in the 31st round.

If nothing else, our scouting and drafting experts need to be eradicated from the system - especially on the pitching side. Stop spending millions on aging players like Luis Castillo and Bengie Molina, and use some of that big market money to lure in some real talent evaluators and draft experts. That's what a smart organization would do.

The reason we are in such bad shape each year when it comes to finding pitchers is because we never add any effective ones to the rotation from our own farm system.

Projected 2010 OPS+ (with Bay)

Using some "fuzzy logic", I have come up with what I feel to be projected OPS+ numbers for the 2010 Mets. I've thrown Bengie Molina in as the catcher, as I have a pretty strong hunch that is going to go down in some fashion soon.

Jason Bay: 134
David Wright: 130
Carlos Beltran: 130
Jose Reyes: 115
Daniel Murphy: 105
Luis Castillo: 95 (Orlando Hudson: 105)
Jeff Francoeur: 95
Bengie Molina: 90

For Wright, I reverted to a number closer to when he was hitting 25 homeruns (rather than 33). Last year, despite hitting only 10 homeruns, Wright still produced a 123 OPS+ on the strength of his OBP.

Beltran is a real wild card and his OPS+ can swing from year to year, so I went with a simple mean. Reyes I went slightly optimistic based on his hunger to get back out there and produce. Reyes seems to live between 100 and 120, and I'll take 115.

I'm putting Murphy at 105 next year, 10 points better than his 2009 campaign, but significantly below his 129 rookie season. Hopefully he surprises us and beats the 105 handily.

Franceour, as much as I root for the guy, lacks the track record to score higher than a 95, which puts him in the .280 average, with 18 HR realm (and as usual, a poor OBP).

Castillo and Molina are offsetting monsters. Neither player is league average in OPS, simply because they are polar opposite one-sided performers. As I like to jest, Luis Molina is a dominant player who can get on base 40% of the time and hits 20 HR, but Bengie Castillo is a real stinker, who basically hits like a pitcher.

The list above shows us what we already know ... the Mets have a very solid top half to their order, followed by a fairly weak bottom half of guys who are "specialized". By specialized I mean that Francoeur and Molina are decent options if they get up with people on base, but not when the bases are empty. The opposite is true for Castillo.

The total OPS+ for the starters is 894. Orlando Hudson, should the Mets find a way to acquire him, puts us at 105 OPS+ at the 2B slot, which would put us just over 900. Simple math shows that the average OPS+ for the starters is around 112.

Looking at the 2009 Phillies, for the sake of comparison, they were several points higher on average when you look at the primary 8, and that includes two very low OPS+ numbers (81 for Pedro Feliz, who is no longer around, and 86 for Jimmy Rollins, who is probably going to improve).

In conclusion, even with the additions of Bay, Molina and Hudson, we're still a significant notch below the Phillies offensively, although the gap is not too wide. If Murphy and Francoeur have breakout seasons, we're probably an even match.

Pitching, is another story ...